


Everymind

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Nevermind (Video Game)
Genre: Because Seriously This Game Is Depressing, Character Study, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Parental Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Social Anxiety, Support Group
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 09:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23468860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: Recovery is a process.As is, well... opening up after spending too much time shut up in your own mind.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 6
Collections: Be The First! 2020





	Everymind

It makes sense now, or so she has come to think.

Why she had always hated the staring.

Staring had meant blame. Staring had meant punishment. Staring had meant secrets. Staring had meant something was going to be taken away.

It had meant all at once.

Staring had meant everyone looking at her as an innocent, horrible fool, being protected from herself. Everyone knowing what she didn’t, and holding that secret just behind a veil as she thought of spilt milk, and Mommy and Daddy’s mail piled up on the counter, and Mommy crying into her hands next to the table where her wine bottle sat empty, and a loud and terrible and terrifying sound, the source of which no one would explain.

But surely, it had started with the spilt milk, she had thought back then.

The more she’d tried to make sense of it, although perhaps the comfort in that was cold, the more she’d come to wonder if how she’d felt in the decades since Dad’s d̵̢̦̙̱̥̂̓̉̒͛̈́̄͘e̵̢̘͐̈́͛̏͌̍̅̐̌̀̾̈́͑́́ã̴̧̡͎͙̦͇̀͗̆̽̈́̀͗̃͠t̸̯̜̭̹̱͓̤͇̦̻̺͙̻̾̏̿͌̌̐̽̉͐͊͠ͅh̸̘̘̄̅͊͋̀̅͝ _suicide_ (suicide) suicide had been how a character on _The Twilight Zone_ felt.

She supposes that this, she can, technically, handle better, as it puts the power in her hands.

It does not mean that she likes it; does not mean that she doesn’t still feel the imposition of three sets of eyes on hungry strangers on her, as opposed to the guarding ones of every stranger trying to hold her in place before she can sprint to pull the curtain off of what she is being held on trial for.

...Hungry stranger.

What terrible phrasing.

She feels terrible _for 18_.

She avoids his sharp and haunted eyes because of the intensity behind them. He feels like a ghost out of purgatory. And then she flinches and lists off a litany of apologies in her head, wondering if he thinks she’s doing it because he’s the only man in the group, or because he’s just _some bum_ , or because she is in some other regard _afraid_ of him, distrustful of him.

In fact, it is a mix of simply not being sure what to say to him and, ironically, feeling like she’s the untrustworthy one.

If it had been about fear, then she surely wouldn’t have any excuse to give 40 the same treatment, as she did - the cursory twitchy smiles and drops of her head and brief glances in the corners of her eyes to make sure that she was speaking as to an audience, not an individual, as she gave her reflections on life and time with sadly-laughing eyes. Something about the regret and rue that adds a knot of hardness and twisting and strain to her voice when the laughter and the sighs fade reminds $̶̗̟̯̖̺͚̜̫͎̽̑@̵̛͍͙͔̹̩̼͖͌͌͗̀̿̈́̈͠r̷̛̲̺̅͛͑̔̎͜͝a̸̱̖̦̣̒͒͜H̵̢̹͕̘͓͎͠ of her mother.

And then she thinks about death again, and hurriedly drops her eyes back into her lap, feeling the hollow, metallic ring of a shock echoing inside the caging of her bones, horrified that she so nearly marked the old woman with it.

Neither distrust nor death are troubles with 09, who she truly feels she ought to look in the eyes - hearing the pain in her voice and the effort of trying to smile when she talks about her loneliness. Her fear of freedom, and the damned if you do, damned if you don’t nature of being vulnerable whether you expose yourself to the world or cling to a hiding spot within it.

But whenever she feels close to her, the poles on a magnet switch. They’re too similar - afraid of being _examined_. _Accused_ of something that came about by accident.

She doesn’t want to test someone already so weary, and so she does her the courtesy of looking away.

In the end, she ends up saying very little.

She, herself, is still being inspected. Possibly accused. Even as she tries to pretend she doesn’t see, she knows 18 continues to study her from his corner of the square with the eyes of a passerby looking through a shop window and seeing two individuals in a heated discussion, wondering what the story is with the ambient, weary resignation of one who is accustomed to being shut out. She knows 40’s looks are firm-but-fair entreatments - motherly. 09’s, with her tragic eyes and tragic smile, are reassurances.

They are trying to lure her, tease her out into the open, and despite the full knowledge of their good intentions, every instinct and firing nerve, when it comes on, spurs and kicks and tells her to buckle, throw her hands over her head and hide in plain sight until they pass and leave her be.

She staves it off, yet still retains the power to not give up anything, if she so chooses.

The power is, again, in her hands.

What is different here, now, from the staring of the past is that _she_ is being stared at as the one keeping secrets.

The terror in this power is that they are secrets she has only recently come to understand; they still burn in her hands when she tries to hold them for even her own inspection, let alone share.

And the correct way - the safe way - to hold them forth for sharing is something that, to her, has never been modeled.


End file.
